Winston S. Churchill Archives - Page 16 of 42

crodociles — Crocodile analogies weren’t new to Churchill. In 1798 after the Battle of the Nile at Aboukir Bay, cartoonist James Gillray depicted Nelson (with a club of “British oak”) slaying “Revolutionary Crocodiles” colored with the French Tricolor. The original caption read: “The British hero cleansing the mouth of the Nile.” (Wikimedia Commons)

Crocodiles: Churchill’s Animal Analogies

16 March 2022 Comments 0 Comments

"[The Bolshevik] crocodiles with master minds entered upon their responsibilities upon November 8 [1917]. Many tears and guttural purrings were employed in inditing the decree of peace.… But the Petrograd wireless stirred the ether in vain. The crocodiles listened attentively for the response; but there was only silence."

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Churchill on Representative Government, and the Voters It Represents

13 March 2022 Comments 0 Comments

"I see the [Parliament] a living and ruling entity; the swift vehicle of public opinion; the arena—perhaps fortunately the padded arena—of the inevitable class and social conflict; the College from which the Ministers of State are chosen, and hitherto the solid and unfailing foundation of the executive power."

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evacuate — Operation Sea Lion invasion routes. (Italian Wikimedia Commons)

Would the Royal Family and Churchill Had Left if the Germans Invaded?

5 March 2022 Comments 1 Comment

“Would the Royal Family and Chrchill Evacuate?” is excerpted from an article for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the original text with endnotes, please click here.

Q: Evacuate the Royals?

I am arguing with a person in another forum that there was a plan in the Second World War to evacuate Churchill and the Royal Family to Canada if the Nazis invaded. I believe it was called Operation Coates, but the reference I found doesn’t mention Churchill.

Churchill doesn’t seem like the sort of person to evacuate. At Sidney Street he was in the front line.…

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“Munich, The Edge of War,” with Jeremy Irons: Fine Acting, Edgy History

25 February 2022 Comments 1 Comment

Regardless of whether you like the movie—and Jeremy Irons gives it an authentic, watchable flavor—we know much more about Munich in the light of scholarship since. We know that Soviet Russia was prepared to stand with Czechoslovakia in 1938, and had become a German ally in 1939. We know how—with the help of Czech armaments—Poland was eradicated in three weeks, the Low Countries in eighteen days, France in six weeks. If resisting Hitler was so ludicrous an idea in 1938, what was there about fighting him in 1939-40 that made it preferable? Given what we know, we are obliged to consider Churchill’s opinion—which was, characteristically, far from baseless.

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Churchill on the Annual Crisis of the National Debt

10 February 2022 Comments 1 Comment

"There are two ways in which a gigantic debt may be spread over new decades and future generations. There is the right and healthy way; and there is the wrong and morbid way. The wrong way is to fail to make the utmost provision for amortisation which prudence allows, to aggravate the burden of the debts by fresh borrowings, to live from hand to mouth and from year to year, and to exclaim with Louis XV: 'After me, the deluge!'” —WSC, 1927

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“My Visit to Russia”: Clementine Churchill’s Wartime Travelogue

5 February 2022 Comments 0 Comments

Clementine Churchill dramatic word-picture of Russia’s devastation remind us of Winston’s words to her about war: “I feel more deeply every year—and can measure the feeling here in the midst of arms—what vile and wicked folly and barbarism it all is.”

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“Churchill Defiant,” by Barbara Leaming: Still the Best on Churchill Postwar

30 January 2022 Comments 0 Comments

Barbara Leaming: “Others Heard Taps, Churchill Heard Reveille”

Churchill Defiant: Fighting On 1945-1955, by Barbara Leaming. London: Harper Press, 394 pages.

“Great captains must take their chance with the rest. Caesar was assassinated by his dearest friend. Hannibal was cut off by poison. Frederick the Great lingered out years of loneliness in body and soul. Napoleon rotted at St. Helena. Compared with these, Marlborough had a good and fair end to his life.” —Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, 1936, Book Two.

A decade on, still a book to read

Readers sometimes ask for the best books to read on Churchill’s career after the Second World War.…

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January 245h — Port Royal Street after the Kingston earthquake of January 1907. (Posted by Mike, Creative Commons)

What Winston Churchill was Doing on January 24th

25 January 2022 Comments 1 Comment

It seems something was always going on in Churchill's life on January 24th. It is best known as day his father died (1895), the day he predicted he would die too (1953)--and when he did (1965). A synopsis of each January 24th in his life would be interesting—as it would be for September 11th, that day of infamy.

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Great War — “With the grenadiers”: Churchill (seated, center) and fellow officers of the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers, Ploegsteert, Belgium, 1916. At WSC’s right is his longtime colleague in war and peace, Archibald Sinclair. (Creative Commons, Samleighton87)

Wikipedia: Churchill’s World War Accounts, History or Memoirs?

22 January 2022 Comments 0 Comments

It is important to get this right, because Churchill's accounts of the two world wars are often incorrectly described as histories. He was adamant that this was a job for later historians.

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“Greatest Law Giver”: The Truth behind Churchill’s Mussolini Bouquets

15 January 2022 Comments 0 Comments

It has been observed that politicians often say nice things about foreign leaders when they owe them lots of money. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1927, Churchill negotiated Italy’s payment of her war debt to Britain, which Mussolini was still honoring in 1933. But this is too flippant, and there is more to the question.

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